School Meals

The Pinellas County School District participates in the National School Lunch/School Breakfast Program. Nutritious meals are served every school day. All meals served must meet patterns established by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Students may qualify for free or reduced-price meals. A family application must be submitted each year for every child in the family. Applications are available throughout the school year from your school. Questions regarding free and reduced-priced meals should be directed to the food service manager, Ms. Debbie Foltz at (813) 855-9452 or

Breakfast and lunch monies can be prepaid and put into your child's account in the cafeteria. Checks are accepted and should be made out to Forest Lakes Cafeteria. The money remains in the student account and may be used for any meal during the year. Your child's account can be replenished at any time to avoid a negative balance. You may also add money to your child's lunch account using the Online Meal Payment.

When an account is running low, the cashier will verbally notify the child and stamp his/her hand with a dolphin stamp. This will also happen if a child is borrowing. Once the student has borrowed, written notices will be placed in his/her teacher’s mailbox. If an account reaches 3 borrowed lunches or a negative balance of $5.25, the child will not be permitted to choose a regular lunch, but will be provided with a cold sandwich and white milk. This will take place until the arrears are paid.

On May 8,2012, the PCS School Board approved an increase in the sale price of lunches for all school levels. The new sale price will begin on the first day of school, Monday, August 25, 2012.

The Elementary Lunch price will be $2.00.

The Middle School and High School Lunch prices will be $2.50. Portion sizes will be increased for secondary students in accordance with new Federal regulations.

Additionally, Food Service requested that all schools serving breakfast be able to provide breakfast to every student at no cost to the student. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; currently, we serve approximately 18,000 breakfasts daily out of our 103,000 student population. We cannot assume that 85,000 students eat breakfast before they arrive at school. Therefore, Food Service would like to feed all children before school at school. The term defining this is program is Universal Free Breakfast for all students.

The Free and Reduced Lunch application process will remain in effect for the coming school year.